Dark Shadows Episode 27

Shadow Babies! We're back! This makes two weeks in a row, which I'm pretty sure is some kind of record worthy of a pint of Guinness (that's how that works right?)

Anyway, when last we left the denizens of Collinsport, Constable Awesome was getting ready to search Burke of the Chin's hotel room; having failed to enjoy his lunch sandwich, which was sad; and Vicky W was trying to convince Lady of the Manor Elizabeth that Devil Child David was a sociopathic murderbaby but her one piece of solid evidence had disappeared. So let's dive right on and see where episode 27 takes us.

We begin, as is ever the way, with a lovely Vicky W monologue;

My name is Victoria Winters. The men who founded the Collins fortune were pioneers, and the great house on the crest of Widows Hill is a symbol of their strength, but it's different now, for the portraits that look down from the paneled walls see only the horror of unreasoning hatred

Not the cheeriest of openings I'll grant you. And I'd question her definition of unreasoning, because I can think of a few perfectly reasons to hate some of the people in that house. But moving on.

We open on Vicky W barging into the drawing room looking for Devil Child David. She obviously assumes that he's the one who took the evidence against him. It's the most logical conclusion, so it's a bit odd that they didn't take 3 episodes to come to it. He's nowhere to be found and on hearing the front door opening Vicky W rushes to see if it's him but no, we have a lucky escape because it's the always adorable Caroline, home from wherever she's been while shit was kicking off. And it's good to have her back, because she provides us with this delightful exchange;

Vicky W: Oh, Caroline, did you see David when you came in?

Caroline: If I had I'd have crossed to the other side of the road.

BURN! But it gets even better;

Caroline: Where's my Mother?

Vicky W: She's somewhere in the house, looking for him.

Caroline: You people don't know when you're well off. If that monster's gone into hiding you should be celebrating, not hunting for him.

I love you Caroline.

Vicky W tries to convince Caroline of the seriousness of the situation but she's having none of it, 'He's only one nine year old boy, the worlds full of them', but her attention is eventually grabbed when Vicky tells her David is an attempted murderer.

*GASP*

Yeah, that's right Caroline, he tried to kill your beloved Creepy Uncle Roger. The little shit!


Caroline finds it hard to believe that her psychotic devil cousin could be capable of murder, despite her earlier dissing of said psychotic devil cousin, and she and Vicky go over the evidence(plot of last episode) for a while and we get a nice little bit of sou. searching from Caroline about her guilt over being the one to bring Burke Devlin into the family home. It seems as much as she professes to believe him innocent, there's still at least part of her who thinks he could be guilty, and she feels complicit. I'm not gonna lie, I think the woman playing Caroline has become one of my favourite actresses on this show, all joking aside.

Anyway, we then cut to this

Classy place you got here

and I got all excited, cos I remembered a time many moons ago when Burke of the Chin told his shady associate to meet him in a hotel in Bangor. This is it! We're finally gonna find out what shady shit that noted proponent of Dastardliness is actually up to!

Also, what a shithole dive.

Burke's associate turns out to be the weediest looking dude you've ever seen, and he's all 'here Mr Devlin, let me take your coat, and fix you a drink, and shine your shoes, and suck your...'

He's a suck-up, is what I'm saying. He makes one helpful gesture too many though, and says he could have come to Burke instead of the other way around. Rubs Burke up the wrong way and no mistake, does that! Burke explains that Mr SuckUp is never to go near Burke in Collinsport and the day anyone in the Stoddard/Collins family connects the two of them, the little toadie can start looking for another job. Alright Burke, calm your tits old Son!

Probably wishing he'd never heard of Burke Devlin

We don't find out what Burke is planing after all, which has me crying into my shandy, but we do get some intriguing hints. After Burke says that he's moved up the timetable on his plans because the sheriff; he means Constable Awesome of course, silly Burke; has been nosing around since Roger's accident, his little toady is confused. Why are you worried about the sheriff, he asks, when we aren't doing anything illegal. Yeah Burke, why?!? Answer the man Burke, inquiring minds want to know!

Burke: When you're planning a surprise party, well it spoils all the fun if the guests of honour know all about it in advance.

Smug Burke. You've gotta love him.

Yeah Burke, cheers, that clears everything right up. NOT! FFS!

Back at the house and Vicky is leading Caroline into her bedroom. Wait, Vicky is leading Caroline into her bedro... you can all leave now, I think I need to be alone. Go on...oh, it turns out that Vicky just wants to show Caroline the dresser that David stole the evidence from. Whatever. I knew that. Vicky is confused because the dresser was locked and didn't seem to have been tampered with, but Caroline reassures her that it's fine, that just means ghosts must have gotten in. Because Caroline knows exactly how to make things better.

Eventually Caroline relents and says she's 'half joking' about the ghosts. Spoiler Alert for a 50 year old show, I know that Dark Shadows does go full on fantasy at some point, with vampires and werewolves and shit. That was, by all accounts a late addition,  but I wonder how much the producers were thinking along those lines in these early days. This isn't the first mention of ghosts that we've had; Devil Child David was going on about 'The Widows' telling him to do things way back at the start.

Anyway, Caroline explains that there's another way David could have gotten into the locked dresser and heads off to get something from her room. Its going to turn out that all the dressers in the house have the same key, isn't it? We don't find out just yet though because Vicky calls her back after hearing a noise from behind the door to the part of the house that is 'closed off' and that 'no-one ever goes into' and that we see David wandering in and out of every fucking week.

The door creaks open ever so slowly as the girls freak out slightly before from out of the shadows; the dark shadows, if you will; comes...

Only me!

Elizabeth makes some daft excuse about having to stop to pick up her keys to explain having taken so long to come through the door, because let's face it, she did it purely because the plot demanded a spooky moment. Then she goes into Vicky W's room, demanding that Vicky go with, so they can talk in private. Then we get an act break and when we return, and I swear to God I'm not making this up, Elizabeth is sitting on Vicky's bed and Vicky has on what I'm 99% positive is a different blouse.

They're just begging for the lesbian fanfic. And they don't need to beg, let me tell you. But anyway...

Anyhoo, after arguing about what may or may not cause a door to open and close by itself, the two ladies are joined once again by Caroline who does indeed open the dresser with a key from her room, because the keys are all the same. How mundane an explanation is that? I was so keen on it having been a ghost, too.

Whilst rooting around in Vicky's undercracker drawer, because who knows when she's next gonna get the chance, Caroline comes across the magazine that David gave to Vicky W as a gift several episodes ago. It just so happens to contain an article about removing just the very part that was removed from Rogers car. 'Strange gift, wouldn't you say?' says Elizabeth. DEVIL CHILD DAVID IS A FUCKING CRIMINAL GENIUS!

"I AM NOW SUSPICIOUS OF YOU, VICKY W!"

Over at Hotel le Bangor Burke is having a right old pop at Toadie, whose name I'm sure I'll remember at some point, because his research, which he thought he had a load more time to finish, isn't finished. Burke is a hard taskmaster, to be sure, but when you have a chin like Burke of the Chin has a chin, you  get used to people jumping to your every whim.

I'm just saying, it's a damned impressive chin.

After much discussion of what properties and businesses the Collins family owns, and which of them are mortgaged and therefore more susceptible to buyouts; giving I think the biggest hint so far as to Burkes plan, we get this piece of dialogue;

Burke: I'm gonna do a job on that family. I wanna hit them so hard they wish they'd never heard of me.

It's a subtle hint, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that that answers the question of whether he really does have a grudge against them once and for all. Or maybe I'm just reading things into his perfectly innocent words.

But what's this?!? There's a vital piece of information missing from the file that Toadie is adamant he had his secretary type up. Maybe, he figures, she just made a mistake and forgot to include it in the file, in which case she would have mailed it to Burke. And doesn't that just make the steam start to pour from Burke's ears. He can't be getting mail with Toadies letterhead on it! That would ruin everything! Toadie is fairly sanguine about the whole thing though; maybe no-one will notice, after all. But as Burke says...

In that town, everybody notices everything. And don't you forget it.

Burke knows the score, yo.

Back at the house, Elizabeth is on the phone to Roger, keeping him abreast of the situation with Devil Child David being missing. Hilariously, Roger seems completely indifferent and shows no inclination whatsoever to come home. Cos fuck that brat, is basically his life's philosophy.

Elizabeth doesn't tell Roger about Vicky's accusations though, because she 'needs to be sure.' Translation, she's trying to figure out the best way to clear David and frame Vicky's lovely lovely ass. Not on my watch, Betty!

And we're back with Burke and Toady; they're really going wild with the choppy scenes this episode. Burke gets a message that he hasn't received any mail today, so that's a weight off, but it comes with the news that Constable Awesome has only gone and bloody searched his room! The cheek of it. He's not a happy bunny, that's for sure.

Angry Burke! See him roar!

But wait, there's yet more to the message! It seems that on top of Constable Awesome, someone else had tried to get into Burke's room that day. Only this one didn't have a warrant and the clerk stopped him before he got in. Oh, and it was a little boy...

DEVIL CHILD DAVID WAS TRYING TO PLANT EVIDENCE ON BURKE OF THE CHIN! I can't decide whether I love this kid or hate him, but the little shit is shameless, I'll give him that.

And that's the end of the episode. Burke is off back to Collinsport to have it out with Constable Awesome and while an Awesome/Burke confrontation isn't Awesome/Roger it's the next best thing and I'm well excited. Also, how will Devil Child David talk his way out of this one? All will be revealed...(I'm getting proper into this now)